A Canterbury Tale

Sheila Sims later Lady Attenborough

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale, from 1944, is an uneven effort from the Archers with a number of wonderful moments. The film concerns three disperate travelers in England during the Second World War. The travelers, modern pilgrims, are on their way to Canterbury, but are stranded in the mythical village of Chillingbourne. One is an American GI played by John Sweet. There is also British soldier played by Denis Price and a urban English lass (Sheila Sims). All three receive a form of benediction when they reach Canterbury Cathedral.

However, the trio are ensnared in a half-assed mystery that is perversely perfunctory. A unknown miscreant has been tossing globs of glue in the hair of young ladies. Since the audience knows the perpetrator practically upon first glance, the mechanics of the trio's search for him is a flimsy edifice on which to rest the film. Luckily, the guilty party, a magistrate who is a member of the landed gentry, is played with suave relish by Eric Portman. The three leads were all making their debuts. Sweet is very awkward, When the war ended he returned to the States became a teacher. Sims, too, is very green, but has a winsomeness to her that suits the role. Price is the most accomplished of the trio and had a successful film career, most famously in Kind Hearts and Coronets. 

I dislike this film's use of juveniles and find its humor wanting, but the picture thrives in the open air of the Kent countryside. I don't give a toss about Chaucer, but when the Archers picture Ms. Sims hearing traces of the pilgrims of yore in a Kentish wind, I was moved. One of Powell's favorite pastimes was camping and hiking in the English countryside with his best friend, Alastair Dunnett, husband of the wonderful novelist Dorothy Dunnett. I was also weak kneed by the eloquence of Powell's camera when Sims searches Canterbury for a garaged caravan in which she enjoyed a halcyon summer with her presumed dead lover. She has trouble locating local landmarks because large swaths of the town had been destroyed in the Baedeker Blitz of 1942. The camera tracks past leveled buildings which had once housed tinkers, tailors, and vacuum machine salesman. A Canterbury Tale shows how the turmoil of World War 2 upended British society, opening up opportunities for women and helping build a less parochial nation. You can feel the winds of societal change that would sweep away the imperialism, misogyny, and selfishness of the landed gentry, personified in the film by Eric Portman and in real life by Winston Churchill.